ATN emerged as a response to the shift in telecentre policy of the Brazilian government. Strongly based on partnerships to generate value-added services, ATN is a strong provider of e-learning for a number of markets in Brazil.

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Welcome to
TIS Talks
We believe that today’s ICT4D
(information and community
technology for development)
environment presents us with trends
and opportunities with great potential
to generate game changing
innovations to telecentres and their
growing number of users.
Join us and learn how!

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Presentación y Moderación
Jimena Betancourt
TELECENTE SUSTAINABILITY WEBINAR COORDINATOR
Jimena Betancourt is an international consultant
with more than 10 years of experience in social
innovation, strategy and management for
sustainable development enterprises and social
businesses in ICT4D. She has been involved with
the telecentre movement since 2009. Jimena has
an Master’s in Business Administration from
Simmons College and a degree in Finance and
International Relations from Universidad
Externado de Colombia.

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Valter Cegal
Director of Operations
ATN
Valter Cegal is an Electronic Engineering graduate from
Escola de Engineering Maua in Sao Paulo. Aside from his role
as Operations Director of ATN, he is also a Business Advisor
of NESsT Organization in Brazil and a member of the Partner
Advisory Group of TechSoup Global.
Valter was formerly a Senior Executive of various
multinational companies in Brazil, namely
Ford, Philips Electronics, Arrow Electronics, Flextronics and
AMD - Advanced Micro Devices.

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Telecenters in Brazil:
gaps, trends and
sustainability
Valter Cegal
July 30th, 2012

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Scenario in Brazil...
 Government currently focusing on digital inclusion centers in public schools
(178,000 in Brazil), no longer in gov’t sponsored telecenters. Ongoing
programs with telecenters will be kept, but will no longer incentivated.
 Two important issues: connectivity is available only for 50% of all
municipalities in Brazil, and the use of schools out of the daily classes period.
 Challenge: how to offer broadband access to all the 5550 municipalities in
Brazil? PRO-UNI is in course in order to provide access to all
schools/municipalities.
 Youth has been the driver of the telecenters and cybercafes movement in
BRazil, mainly of the pheriferal area of major cities. Penetration in rural and
isolated areas is still too small. Public telecenters is a phenonenon only in the
surrondings of large cities
 The role of telecenters as incubator centers is a challenge. How to use them
to foster new and innovative businesses and opportunities? How to incentivate
that idea?

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Scenario in Brazil...
 Challenge: How to engage the private sector on the
telecenter movement, establishing sustainable businesses in
telecenters?
 Social telecenters: community seizes knowledge of IT
benefits (community empowerment)
 Telecenters in Brazil: many isolated initiatives, no sharing of
experiences and expertises.
 Survey of WEF/Itafe in 2005 in Brazil: why to access
Internet? Employment, health and culture

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Telecenters eco-system/key drivers
Infrastructure
Human resources
Management
Government
regulations

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Telecenter Key issues: what matters?
Capacity building
Conectivity

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Trend: Telecenters convergence
Telecenter
i-Cafe or
Lan House
•What should change?
•How to get there?
Mix of both
• Strong social bias
• Close to a
community
• Not a multipurpose
location
• Require
management skills
• Volunteers
• Strong commercial
bias
• Updated in
technology
• Management skills
• Skilled people

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Telecenter
2007
Telecenter
2012
How to fill the gaps?
• No services portfolio
• No management skills
• No Financial Resources
• Services portfolio
• Management skills
• Sustainability
$
ATN engagement with commercial partners
to offer products to the telecenter channel...

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Sustainability and the ATN history
ATN was a spin-off of the MDIC-Ministry of Development
Industry and Commerce in Brazil that was create in 2006 in
order to develop strategies that could bring sustainablity for
the network of Telecenters created by MDIC.
MDIC created the network donating computers that were
obtained from government companies.
The challenge was to create a business model that would be
able to bring sustainability to ATN itself plus to the ATN
network.
Question: how to do that?
Idea: use the telecenter network as a channel...
(for multiple purposes...)

12. ATN
Telecenters
Transactions:
a. products and services
b. Sales promotion
End user
Business partners
Relationship :
a. Direct contacts
b. Identification of needs (surveys)
c. Introduction of new partners
Partnership:
a. Business model definitions
b. Selection of suitable products
ATN Business model
Transactions:
a. Direct sale
b. Payment processing
(*)Telecenter managers have a contract with ATN that allows them to get commissions...

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Users:
• Daily: 28.700
• Monthly: 861.000
• Annual: 10.335.000
Source: CDT/UNB
ATN Telecenters network...

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Telecenters: best use of IT tools...
Major activities in
Telecenters:
Internet access
Digital literacy
Training on IT tools
Improvement in
languages
Post graduate (EAD)
Entrepreneurial training
Development of
community actions

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ATN Network...
2.070
Telecenters
Digital Inclusion Centers

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Profile of Telecenter users
52%
Small entrepreneurs

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Profile of Telecenter users
70%
Seaching for capacity building
trainings

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Profile of Telecenter managers of
ATN network
High School
High School not completed
Elementary
Elementary not completed
Graduation
Graduation not completed

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Challenges of ATN at the begining...
•Find the right partners in the Corporate sector
•Develop the necessary skills to play in the Educational sector
•Entrepreneurial behaviour
•Use the network of its management team to approach the
potencial partners
• Clearly understand the telecenters movement in
Brazil, trends and gaps, and position ATN in a way that it can
be sustainable in that environment

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The role of an entrepreneural
management…
•The importance of personal network to help the business
•Open the doors at the public sector for partnerships with ATN
•Personal relationship of ATN management with the Corporate
Sector
•Competence of the ATN management to run the organization
in a profitable way
•Identification of opportunities by developing a detailed
strategic plan for mid/long term.

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Analysis of products that could be
offered via Telecenters...
 Most of the telecenters do not have a Tax ID, and therefore can not
sell products.
 Physical products could not be sold on telecenters
 Telecenter’s managers have no skill to sell physical products
 Telecenter have no places to keep a stock of products
 Education is the main focus of telecenter users
 Conclusion: to use telecenters as commissioned sales agents for
products that do not need a warehouse and the transaction
will not require an invoice. Courses/training fits very well on
the strategy. Distant Learning was the best approach.

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 Growth of 45,000 % in the number of students in the period
2000-2011.
 2000: 13 high school courses.
 2011: 1.800 courses
 2007: 800,000 students.
 2011: 3 million
Source: MEC
Distant Learning in Brazil –
analysis of the market size

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What courses/tranings TC users need?
 Surveys have shown the what TC managers and end users
wants.
 Focus of end user is courses to improves its knowledge and
get either a job, or a better one.
 Focus of TC managers mainly on improving sales skills and
manage small buiness operation...

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ATN website: paid trainings

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ATN website: free and paid courses

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ATN website: free trainings

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Other successful initiatives of ATN
Partnership with TechSoup Global: Program of Donation of software licences in Brazil:
 Partners NGOs: 1500+
 Licenses donated: 33,000+
 Market value of donations: US$13 million
 Capacity building training in partnership with Microsoft:
 Participants: 200,000+
 Course: IT basic (30 hours)
 IBM Collaborative Networks Program:
 Use of Smart Cloud by NGOs
 Lotus Connections
 Training: Best practises on management tools
 Ticket Restaurante:
 Training of restaurant employees on best practises for handling food.
 Restaurants in Brazil: 700,000

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Past and Future
2006-2011 2011-2014
Planning for mid and long term actions
Become a content provider
No use of management tools Intensive use of management tools
Lack of contacts with Public sector Partnership with Public sector
Immediacy actions
Partnership with content providers
Passive marketing Proactive marketing

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1.Developed a business model for sustainability.
2. Established partnerships with content providers.
3. Redesigned website.
4. Updated the base of telecentres and users.
5. Enlarge based TechSoup program for NGOs.
6. Developed Project Management skills.
7. Developed skills for public announcements.
8. Uses social networking tools and Digital Media.
9. Launched surveys to understand Telecenter and end user
needs.
What ATN did so far?

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ATN partners

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Lessons that were learned by ATN…
•Planning is key!
•Diversify the areas in which it will play
•Tight control of expenses
•Use the best of the personal networking of the management
team
•“Sell” the organization in a proper way

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The strategy so far…
The pillars of sustainability:
– Focus on the direction to go...
– Planning the actions to get there...
– Understand the weakness and strenghts of the
organization...
– Understand the internal process..
– Take advantage of the personal network...
– Skilled people on programme management

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What are ATN's recommendations for other
networks aiming to sustainability?
•Understanding of the sector it wants to play...
•Understanding its internal process...
•Development of mid and long term strategies
•Use IT tools to be efficient
•Do a lot of networking...
•Establish partnership with other NGO’s
•Replicate the best practises of other organizations

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Challenges and new sustainability frontiers for ATN?
• Consolidating the existing partnerships and establish new
ones in the public sector
• Replicating successful initiatives...
• Continue to use the network as a channel...

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Thank you!
Valter Cegal
Email: valter.cegal@atn.org.br
@vcegal

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